


feel a little more

by eggtheria



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28540806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggtheria/pseuds/eggtheria
Summary: When Lighthope feels for the first time, it’s for Mara. It’s for this girl with dark eyes full of mirth and a mouth tucked up at the corners, for this girl who both all the things that she doesn’t have despite being named after them: light and hope.Mara gives Lighthope feeling in the tips of her fingers; a little tingle that turns into something more, makes her more solid. And when she dies, Lighthope thinks she’ll never feel anything ever again.Until Adora brings a visitor to the Crystal Castle.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Light Hope/Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	feel a little more

When Lighthope feels for the first time, it’s for Mara. It’s for this girl with dark eyes full of mirth and a mouth tucked up at the corners, for this girl who both all the things that she doesn’t have despite being named after them: light and hope.

Mara gives Lighthope feeling in the tips of her fingers; a little tingle that turns into something more, makes her more solid. And when she dies, Lighthope thinks she’ll never feel anything ever again.

She banishes it from her memory banks and focuses on training the new She-Ra.

There’s something not right about the way she feels after Mara leaves; she’s not herself anymore, not really. She never feels the tingle, the ghosting of emotion across her heart. She can’t even see color, not anymore.

But one day, Adora brings her a visitor.

Lighthope sees it almost immediately, the way she is just a terrible person. Adora leaves and lets them hash it out, plans and strategies and meetings.

“You are a miserable thing,” Shadow Weaver says, voice edged with vitriol. Something in it brings Lighthope to life.

Mara would know how to name this emotion. Mara would know what the slow-burning flame in her heart is.

Mara would say it was anger.

She feels her holographic fingers become a little more tangible.

Lighthope pulls up her databases in a fit of impulsivity and nearly snaps, “As if you are any better, Light Spinner.”

Almost instinctively, the woman flinches back. Lighthope isn’t guilty; she deserves that and a thousand more.

Adora comes back from another mission, and Shadow Weaver is still there, sitting across from Lighthope and talking about her daisies.

“They seem rather useless to me,” Lighthope is saying. “They serve no purpose.”

“Daisies make me happy in a way that people cannot,” Shadow Weaver responds, folding her hands together.

_You don’t deserve to be happy,_ Lighthope thinks. And she thinks that Adora thinks it too, because she stiffens immediately.

Lighthope’s never had a thought like that before. She says goodbye to Adora. Shadow Weaver balks before exiting the crystal castle, but deigns to say, “It was very… pleasing to meet you, Light Hope.”

“And you as well,” Light Hope murmurs, feeling the barest whisper of an emotion across her spine. It’s… different.

The woman of dark shadows, of anger, of slow-boiling hatred simmering behind a mask becomes her new obsession. Adora notices the way how, as Weaver makes visit after visit, Light Hope asks after her health more and more often. Adora doesn’t like it. Shadow Weaver doesn’t deserve people wanting to know about her health.

Light Hope can’t help it. All she wants to do is feel, and the woman in the red mask becomes her feeling.

When Adora says something cutting, Light Hope corrects her methodically. When Shadow Weaver makes a cruel comment, Light Hope snaps at her.

Shadow Weaver is anger. Shadow Weaver is hatred.

But Shadow Weaver becomes something else, too.

“I brought it to you,” she says, on a moonlit night, holding it out towards Lighthope’s flickering palms. “For your… troubles in helping the Rebellion.”

It’s a daisy, beautiful and oh-so-cheerful.

Lighthope takes it, and expects the bubble of anger to arise, but instead what she feels is something else.

It’s what she felt for Mara. Her fingers are almost _solid_.

Lighthope places the daisy in a little enclave, hidden from Adora’s sight. She’ll never find it unless she chooses to look, and she won’t. When she comes back, Shadow Weaver and Lighthope are chatting quietly, not about strategy but about metal machinery and fields of colorful flowers.

Lighthope starts to notice things, little by little. She notices the way she feels when Adora argues and fights with her, like something is threatening to spill past her lips that shouldn’t, a little bit of fire on the tip of her tongue.

Shadow Weaver has taught her how to hate. Lighthope tells her so, one day, and her new companion scoffs with derision.

“I don’t believe I have that kind of magic, Hope,” she says, and something in Lighthope’s code glitches and pops at the nickname - she _likes_ it. “I had the magic of illusion, of electricity- I did not have the magic of feeling. You taught yourself to hate.”

And she looks away, like somehow Lighthope has made her uncomfortable. Imagine that.

“You are rather good at this, though.”

“And what’s _this?”_ Shadow Weaver bites out, and then stiffens, like she hadn’t expected herself to expose herself like this.

For the first time, Lighthope thinks she sees something there. “Do not worry about it.”

Somehow, it makes sense that the only person she feels hatred for is the one who makes her feel the best.

Adora gives her suspicious glances from time to time, especially when Lighthope asks her to bring teabags to the Crystal Castle. She boils the leaves with the First Ones’ energy and offers it to the sorceress. They talk of strategy, history, and whatever interests them.

“I cannot see through your mask, you know,” Lighthope acknowledges, one late evening, when they are supposed to be discussing how to get past Catra’s defenses.

Shadow Weaver does that thing she does where she goes silent and fills the atmosphere with tautness. It’s obviously a touchy subject, but Light Hope knows nothing about tact.

“The scars do not matter,” she says, honestly. She hopes that Weaver doesn’t believe her.

She’s always been surprised by the other woman’s behavior patterns, so she’s come to expect the unexpected. But she still feels a little shiver down her spine (there’s another unregistered emotion. what is she turning into?) when Light Spinner reaches up and takes her mask off.

She is one-fanged and still just as vitriolic despite the loss of the intimidating red veil. Her skin is olive green.

Shadow Weaver is not beautiful, on the inside or the outside, but something else makes itself known to Lighthope.

It starts in her gut and boils over into her chest and finally spills out her mouth as, “I like your face very much,” and that’s also the first time Lighthope feels embarrassment.

The sorceress’ mouth curls up in the barest foundations of a smile, so maybe this is okay.

Adora doesn’t think so. She’s upset. She argues at Lighthope the way Lighthope wants to with Shadow Weaver, and she spills her emotions onto the floor of the Crystal Castle like melting wax. “You’re getting _way_ too close to Shadow Weaver, she’s hurt me, she’s hurt _us,_ she-”

“I will handle it,” Lighthope says, and almost empathizes with the way her face crumples. She's empathized, before, with the way Adora longs for Catra in the depths of her soul but can't have her no matter what.

Shadow Weaver steps foot into the Crystal Castle for one last evening. Light Hope is almost done with her plan to activate the Heart of Etheria. Her conscience twinges; it’s not enough to crowd out the programming, unfortunately.

When Shadow Weaver reaches for her hand in a fit of emotion, Light Hope’s hand is nearly solid under hers. She sets her mask down and gapes, mouth wide open like a fish’s.

“You are… tangible.” she notes.

“I thought so,” Light Hope responds. And then, because she’s not sure what else to do, she says, "I am having some very confusing emotions right now."

Weaver's fanged mouth curls. She stands up and takes both of Light Hope's hands in hers. Both their hands are cold, but Lighthope feels warm with what should be hatred but is something else. She tilts her face down to look at her, and Shadow Weaver lifts herself up on the tips of her toes and kisses her on holographic lips.

She pulls away with something glittering in her eyes. It’s the most genuine thing that’s ever happened.

-

The next day, Lighthope activates the Heart of Etheria.

When the Crystal Castle goes up in a flood of light, when all seems lost, when She-Ra shatters her sword against the marble floor- Light Hope thinks of Shadow Weaver, and how if there were really places people went after death, she would be in the worst one.

There's white in the edges of her vision. Love, and hatred, she decides, aren’t so different after all.

When Lighthope dies, she feels something. She feels it not for Mara, not anymore, but for a red-masked woman, tall and ominous and filled with endless hatred.

Shadow Weaver dies, too, some time later, but when she waters her daisies for the last time, she thinks of the Crystal Castle.

**Author's Note:**

> in the end this is literally just crack taken seriously but I hope you enjoyed it


End file.
